Fran O’Sullivan reveals her softer side today. No, she’s not against National’s benefit cuts for the unemployed, the sick, and invalids. Nor against cutting the wages of the 103,000 working 15-19 year olds on the half-baked premise that will create more jobs. But leave single mums alone, she says, because she had one. It reminds me of something I saw on the Daily Show.
[hmm, we see to have lost our ability to embed from the Daily Show but click the link]
“They’re only really entitlements [benefits] when they’re something that other people want. When they’re something you want, they’re the hallmark of a civilised society, the foundation of a great people. I just had a baby and found out that maternity leave strengthens society. But, since I still have a job, unemployment benefits are clearly socialism”
This really exposes the self-centredness of Torism. It’s like David Farrar supporting public money subsidising the wanky plays he likes to watch and Cameron Slater going silent on sickness beneficiaries ever since he became one after his insurance company stopped letting him rip them off. Or Paul Holmes who …. um … well even Paul Holmes doesn’t really know what he supports from one paragraph to the next but it generally involves violence against others challenging the system or saying it is failing them while bleating loudly for more support from the system for himself and those he care about. In talkback land, they’re always wanting more public money for sports and decrying the ‘bludgers’ who want ‘us’ to support their ‘lifestyle choice’ of being unemployed during the worst recession in generations.
The conflict expresses itself in the government’s rhetoric when they preen about any supposed spending increase on helath or edcuation, or infrastructure, while loudly decrying the fact that spending rose on exactly those things under Labour, when it didn’t benefit the Nats politically.
They’re all for government spending and rights but only if it directly supports them and their interests. And that is one of the fundamental differences between Left and Right. We give a shit about others.
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